Hello CubeCrafters!
It's been a while since I got to write an update but here we go.
Here's the TL;DR: We're removing games that had little to no players and have redesigned the lobby. If you'd like to know more read on!
Currently available in the new lobby is:
- Tower Defence
- Lucky Islands
- SkyWars
- EggWars
- PvP
- Parkour
- ???????
It's been a long time coming for us to clean up all the mini-games we have and make the network both more manageable for us and better for players. With the decrease generally in the number of Minecraft Java players we've decided now is the right time. For the longtime CubeCraft players put yourself in the shoes of a new player who's joining the network for the first time (yes there are still a fair few of those!). If they joined one of our less popular games then they may have to wait quite a while for it to start. In fact that game may never start, which would be a very frustrating player experience. Decreasing the number of total games allows them to be full more of the time and make sure they begin quickly. We have had a similar experience on Bedrock and players can get in to a game quickly with it starting regularly.
Fewer games means that we can also focus on improvements to those games. I know that it frustrates members of the community when they suggest something, get feed back and even receive the "Escalated" tag but then not see it in the game weeks or even months after. The main reason for this is time and resource. Many people who want to help seem to think that both of these are unlimited (or at least more than we have). To provide continuous updates for 41 different games (as single and team modes are different code wise) as a team of 7 developers is impossible. This has changed in recent months as we also started working on the Bedrock versions of our games too. The only way that it is feasible for us to continue is to decrease the number of games we have allowing more of our developers a chance to work on them.
It's worth noting that just because a lot of games are going to be unavailable we're not simply deleting them. For now we'll be showing them off on a 2 week rotating basis through the Featured Game area. This is also where we'll show off our seasonal games. We've already decided what our first featured game will be and we're looking forward to releasing it, however we'd like to hear which games you want to see after that. Leave us a comment below with your vote! (Unless it's BlockBand, that's not coming back).
There are some negatives of the new lobby system. For now we've removed the compass so you will have to walk and hit the NPC you want to play however we've also taken the redesign as an opportunity to add in a lot of other quality of life updates:
- There are no longer lots of different lobbies each with their own layouts meaning we can focus builders on new game maps etc.
- All players will pass through the main lobby making it easier to find people you want to play with.
- The old leaderboards are gone and are now in a menu meaning we can show the top 200 players not just the top 5!
- Game shops are now available in the main lobby (accessed via the book in your inventory).
- The Lucky Islands resource pack is now optional.
- You can see the player counts for each game from the lobby.
- New duel settings! Right click on a player to challenge them (disable-able in settings).
- New Lobby Parkour and Vortex Jump.
- New Chest Chaser and Relic Hunter locations.
- Redesigned Main Lobby (we made it a little smaller so it's easier to find things!)
Now that's the main negative out of the way, let's talk about some of the new features and changes!
Left clicking on an NPC will bring up the menu for that game. From here you can click on the game's item to jump in to a game or (if you have a rank that allows it) right click the icon to select a map. For games with more than one version (for example team and solo) you will see two icons.
In the bottom right you can also see a map. Clicking on this will show your statistics for that game.
That's everything I think. A lot to digest and no doubt a lot to get used to! I hope that you can all understand the reasons behind this and I look forward to seeing which games get chosen to be featured. The new leaderboard system is also interesting... but that's for another, future, post!
See you all in game :D